The Missouri town of Ferguson looks like a war zone as police fire tear gas, stun grenades and smoke bombs to break up a fifth night of protests over the police shooting of unarmed African-American teenager Michael Brown. At least 10 people were arrested on Wednesday, including St. Louis Alderman Antonio French, who has been posting video online of the protests and who appeared on Democracy Now! earlier this week. An earlier protest faced a heavy police response, with police in riot gear stationed by a massive armed vehicle in the street. Journalists from The Washington Post and Huffington Post were also arrested last night and then released without charges. They were detained while filing reports from a McDonald’s restaurant. Ferguson police have refused to release the name of the officer who shot Brown, citing fears for his safety. They have also called on demonstrators to limit their protests to daytime hours. We go to St. Louis to speak with Patricia Bynes, Democratic committeewoman of Ferguson Township. Bynes has been out in the streets of Ferguson every night documenting the protests on Twitter.

One year ago today, Egyptian forces opened fire on a sit-in at Rabaa al-Adawiya Square in Cairo. Tens of thousands of people had camped in the square to protest the ouster of democratically elected President Mohamed Morsi. Over the course of a single day, in what became known as the Rabaa massacre, Egyptian forces killed at least 817 people. Now, Human Rights Watch has unveiled a new report that concludes Egypt’s actions likely constituted a crime against humanity, one of the worst violations of international law. The report puts the massacre on par with China’s infamous massacre of unarmed protesters at Tiananmen Square. We are joined by Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth, who, along with Middle East Director Sarah Leah Whitson, attempted to enter Egypt and present the group’s findings earlier this week, but was detained and turned away. We are also joined by Dr. Abdul Mawgoud Dardery, a former member of the Egyptian Parliament with the Freedom and Justice Party, the Muslim Brotherhood’s political arm, which has just been dissolved by a court. Dardery left Egypt after the coup and is now living in the United States. And we are joined from Cairo by Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous.

The Obama administration has opened two new family detention centers to hold hundreds of women and children from Central America who fled to the United States reportedly to escape violence in their home countries. While most of the 63,000 unaccompanied minors detained at the border since January have now been placed with family members as their cases are processed, those caught with their mothers are being held without bond. A 600-bed detention center run by GEO Group in Karnes City, Texas, opened at the beginning of August and is reportedly already full. Democracy Now! producer Renée Feltz visits a second detention center in Artesia, New Mexico, to report on the poor conditions and lack of due process for migrants, and the lawyers mobilizing to assist them. "Children were not eating. Children were getting very sick," says attorney Megan Jordi. "Every child I saw looked incredibly emaciated and had a hollow look in their eyes."

DN! In Depth

By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan — The corporate television newscasts spend more and more time covering the increasingly disruptive, costly and at times deadly weather. But they consistently fail to make the link between extreme weather and climate change.